Monday, August 28, 2006

Bon Cop Bad Cop held at #3 in the Canadian box office, in its fourth weekend in Quebec and its second weekend in the Rest of Canada. That's beating Snakes on a Plane (2 weeks), Beerfest (1 week) and World Trade Center (three weeks), among others.

It is a silly movie. But I'm proud of it.

And now I would like to point out the direct relationship between marketing dollars spent and receipts. BCBC got $1M in promotion throughout Quebec (pop. 8 or so million) and $1M in R.O.C. (population 25 or so million). Opening weekends were 1.4 million in Quebec and 350,000 in the Rest of Canada.

In other words, where Alliance spent three times as much money per capita promoting the picture, we got four times the opening.

I am sure the argument for spending less promoting the picture in ROC is that Canadian movies in French do much better in Quebec than Canadian movies in English do in all of Canada. French movies made in Quebec have climbed to 27% of the French market; English films languish between single digits and decimal points:



But maybe there is a self-fulfilling prophecy there? If they actually promoted English language films, instead of merely making them ... in other words if people actually knew what they were about and when to go see them ... maybe market share would go up?

Two weeks prior to the opening in Quebec, you could not avoid knowing about Bon Cop Bad Cop. I turned on French radio maybe four times, for maybe ten minutes each driving to pick up my daughter from day care. I heard stuff about Bon Cop twice. Once was an ad, once was a talk radio guy saying it was the "must see movie of the summer." Bus ads? Everywhere. Posters? Everywhere. Humongous posters in the multiplexes? Check. Trailers, ben oui.

Two weeks prior to the opening in Toronto ... zip. If you'd been to a movie, you'd have seen a trailer. Otherwise, crickets.

Maybe Telefilm should spend a little less money helping fund movie production, and a little more money promoting movies that have been made?

Advertising.

Just putting it out there.

(And here's James Oregan on the same subject.)

Labels: Bon Cop

9:37 PM

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